


but not without my muse

by loyaulte_me_lie



Series: you were written in the stars [1]
Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, F/M, Falling In Love, Love Letters, Possibly the Happiest Thing I've Ever Written Ever, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28390734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: John Parry and Elaine Idowu meet at a New Year’s Eve party in Verona on the turn of the millennium. This is everything that happens next.
Relationships: John Parry/Elaine Parry
Series: you were written in the stars [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108145
Comments: 10
Kudos: 23





	but not without my muse

**Author's Note:**

> This is all Marie’s fault. She got my brain going on this, and then helped me brainstorm the majority of the story, got very excited about it with me at stupid o’clock when we both should have been asleep, and then beta read it. All in all, this should really be credited as a joint work. It came out of our joint fascination with John and Elaine's relationship which rarely gets explored beyond the (in the books) "he turned down a witch because he loves his wife" and the "ten years spent trying to get back to them." Considering what an awesome person John Parry is, it stands to reason that Elaine must be something pretty special.
> 
> Also, as usual, thanks to Matthew for all the military backstory for John. It was written with folklore by Taylor Swift going on repeat, which is where the title comes from (the lakes). Be warned.
> 
> T/W: discussion of bereavement, discussion of offscreen violence, discussion of offscreen racist characters.

The stone windowsill is cold through the velvet of Elaine’s dress and there is a chill breeze fingering its way around the half-open door to the bar. Most people are too drunk to notice, despite the fact it’s not yet nine pm. It's a little too cold for Elaine but she decides not to do anything about it. A little cold doesn’t matter on an evening like this, on New Year’s Eve in Verona. Everyone is glittering in their finery as they totter about the place, slurring their excitement over the turn of time, the flip of the millennia. It’s a good place to see it in, she thinks as she toys with her half-empty glass and watches them, constructs metaphors and images in her head for later use. A place that’s already poetry in motion, a place that doesn’t demand anything, that just needs her to soak it in, to bask in the golden lyricism of it all. She can take this night, this whole _year_ back to Oxford with her when it’s over, eke it out into her poems for months to come. She can’t miss a single detail, not now it’s so close to being over.

She doesn’t realise that a man has slipped quietly from the crowd until he’s basically standing right in front of her. She blinks, lifts her glass to her mouth. He’s white, brown-haired, smiling-handsome with crows’ feet dug in around his eyes. She’s heard him hailed as he’d arrived – “il capitano, il capitano” – the way heroes are always monopolised. She’d thought that he doesn’t much look like a stereotypical pirate captain at all, but perhaps she shouldn’t always go by the images in her head. The world is and always had been unexpected.

“Do you mind if I?” he asks, eyes on her face instead of dipping to her neckline the way most men have this evening, before quickly realising that Elaine isn’t going to make it worth their time the way her two friends most definitely will. His Italian is washed with a strong English accent.

She smiles, replies in English. “By all means.”

“Ok,” he says, a little surprised, sitting down beside her. He’s wearing a soft-looking white shirt over broad shoulders, a red corduroy blazer. His smile is small and quiet. He sticks out a hand. “John.”

“Elaine.” She takes it. His hands have calluses in all manner of odd places. She wonders what could have made them, the story behind each and every one. Her mother used to say to her that not everything has a story worth telling, but Elaine doesn’t believe that. She never has. Stories are what makes the world go round.

As is the way of parties, when he pulls a leg up to his chest, turns to lean against the brickwork of the window and balances his glass on his knee, she expects him to ask a standard small-talk, chitchat question. Where are you from? What are you doing here? But he doesn’t. He looks out of the lead-paned window at the glowing street below for a second and then looks back up at her and says, “Odds on the world ending tonight?”

“The odds on a collective apocalyptic experience are relatively low, I think,” Elaine says, tucking one of her braids back into the scrunchie she’d pulled them into earlier this evening. Her boss has been going on about this Y2K phenomenon for weeks now. She likes him for asking about it, though. It’s her kind of conversation starter. She shrugs, a little self-deprecating. “But the world’s ending on a small scale every day, no?”

He doesn’t give her the weird look she’s lowkey expecting. She can hear her mother in head: _must you be so dramatic?_ It’s not drama, she imagines herself repeating patiently. It’s figuring out who’s worth it. A pretty face is just a pretty face; sure, he is quite a bit more than just pretty, but if he decides she’s an oddball not worth bothering with, she’d rather know it now. His smile widens, a flash of pearly teeth.

“Tell me more?”

It’s like the air has been inconveniently sucked from their corner of the room. His eyes are magnetic, blue-grey, like a sky considering the possibility of storms. She can’t think of a better response. She can’t believe he’s _interested._ She disguises the way the world has suddenly lurched by bringing her glass higher, taking another sip of wine.

“Worlds are always ending,” she says. “Every day is a little world ending. Every moment is one you’re not going to get back. And then, going bigger, you’d say that every time something dies – a person, a colonised civilisation, a tradition, an idea – that’s a world gone.”

“But surely those are also beginnings, too?”

Elaine pulls a face. “Sometimes. But too often lives are left ruins, I think, and ruins aren’t a kind legacy.”

“I didn’t say good beginnings. Beginnings don’t always have to be positive.”

“And the edge of each other’s battles, the war is the same,” Elaine murmurs. She watches his eyes dip to her mouth and then back up to hers. “They don’t. You’re right.”

“Is that yours?” he asks.

She grins, flushes, looks down into her glass. “You flatter me. It’s Audre Lorde.” When she looks up, he looks like someone who is vaguely worried that he will be judged for not knowing an important thing, a piece of common-sense knowledge that all English girls at parties know. Elaine takes pity on him. “She’s an African-American poet. A brilliant one.”

“I’ll look her up,” he says, and she gets the feeling that he is the kind of man who will, who isn’t just saying it for show. “Do you write?”

“Sometimes. Flotsam and jetsam. Do you?”

“I’m more of a scientist, I’m afraid.”

“What kind?”

“Physics. I did my degree in it, before I joined the Marines. Focussed on astrophysics, cosmology. Why we’re here. How the universe came about. What the universe is actually made of.”

“Poetry too, then.”

“Yes,” he says, like it’s a complete revelation. His eyes are still on her face, hazy now. The colour right before twilight. Then, bashful, “I’d never thought of it like that before.”

“The things you realise when encountering mysterious women at parties,” Elaine says, and he tips his head back against the wall and laughs, his whole face crinkling up like joy personified. There is something very close and warm uncurling in her chest. She wonders, absently, what it would be like to see his face do that for decades, for centuries, forever.

“Il capitano, vieni con noi?” someone shouts from near the door. Captain, are you coming? Elaine notes that since he’s mentioned the Marines, he’s evidently not a captain of the seafaring kind, restores her images of pirates to their proper place. She doesn’t want him to go, doesn’t want this conversation to end.

“Where?” he calls back to them.

“Wherever the wind takes us!” the man Elaine doesn’t recognise says, gesticulating with his drink that sloshes over the flagstones. “It’s New Year! We don’t need a plan!”

John looks back at her. “Are you coming?”

Elaine meets his gaze and drains her drink, makes a snap decision. She’s got New Year off from the kids, her boss had given her some money and told her to be back by dawn. That she didn’t need to stick around for the party if she didn’t want to. That she should enjoy her last few days in the city. Laure and Arabella had found this party, are now lilting around the room draped over young men’s arms. She doesn’t really feel the need to stay with them. They’re great fun, but they won’t be overly worried by her absence. She stands and follows John out of the door, calling a breezy “see you later” to her friends which gets a wave in return. She’s always been so responsible, what with rent to pay and her mother to look after and now the kids in her charge – it feels good to be following a handsome man into the night on New Year’s, to be living as though she’s in a novel rather than the translucent mundanity that has figured most of her life thus far.

Outside, it is colder than she’d expected, and she shivers as she tucks her bag over her shoulder. Arabella had talked her into this velvet thing she’s wearing, and it’s not nearly practical enough for being outside in December. Instantly and before she even realises, John has shrugged off his blazer and tucked it around her shoulders. It’s heavy and warm and smells amazing – like coffee and smoke and faintly floral laundry soap.

“Thank you,” she says, tugging it a bit closer. Then, because she was raised to be a meddler as well as a poet, “Aren’t you going to be cold?”

“This has nothing on the Arctic,” is his oblique response. Elaine raises her eyebrows, skeptical.

“I can see your goosebumps from here.”

His smile is quicksilver, here and gone. All of his smiles are different, she’s quickly realising; the knowledge of this is _thrilling._ “Caught me.”

She unwinds her scarf and drapes it around his neck. They’re nearly the same height. She rather like that about him. She also likes that he just throws the loose end of the scarf over his shoulder, doesn’t even comment on the fact it’s sparkling with silver embroidery and rather feminine looking. Not many men she knows would do something like that.

The streets are thronging with people headed to and from the party in the Piazza Bra. They trail behind their group of friends and evening acquaintances. He doesn’t take her hand, but they are walking close enough that their arms are constantly brushing each other, like magic, like an old song. She’d had all sorts of romantic thoughts about coming to Italy to do this job, but it was all in the abstract – gothic novels and renaissance portraits and sun-soaked vistas. It wasn’t anything specific. The romance of this has taken her completely by surprise, and she laughs a little at herself, at plain Elaine Idowu, born and raised in Cowley, wearing a handsome man’s jacket in Italy and tipsily talking poetry.

“The Arctic, huh?” she asks after a few streets in quiet.

“Yes. Last year. We were training up there, CO thought it would be fun to hike to the magnetic north.” He smiles down at her in the dark. “I think it’s perhaps the best thing I’ve done with the forces, truth be told.”

“It must have been magical.”

“It was.”

Elaine chews on her lip, chooses her words carefully. “What was the most unexpected thing about it?”

Another smile, this one to the floor, as though he’s pleased to be asked. “The light. The light was unbelievable, just the fact of it. The fact that it never went away. It messes up your understanding of time, your sense of up and down. And then the history. It was pretty cool to walk in the steps of all those who’d come before us; there aren’t many, not really.”

“Light and history and time,” Elaine murmurs. “That’s an incredible combination.”

“I’ll trust the expert,” he says, and on a whim she digs an elbow playfully into his side, loving how daring he makes her feel, at how comfortable she already feels in his company. He laughs again and she tries to memorize it, the way his face looks in the dark.

“I’m not an expert. I just like words and concepts.”

“Uh-huh?”

“It’s just amazing. Language is such an interesting toolbox, and the way people use it to express themselves…art, too, but for me there’s something about stories and songs and poems…we’ve been telling them our whole existence, right?” She sighs. “Ironically, I can’t even express it coherently _in_ words. But you know that feeling when something just speaks to you?”

“Yes. I know. I get that about landscapes. It’s like,” he touches two fingers to the centre of his chest. Their elbows brush. “Right here.”

“Like your heart is about to burst out of your chest. It’s incredible.”

“Like it’s just you and the universe resonating at the same frequency.”

“That! Yes, _yes._ ” She steps forward and turns so she’s walking backwards in front of him as they enter another piazza, further down the river. She has no idea where their companions have gone, doesn’t really care. “And you say you’re not a poet.”

“Maybe you bring it out in me,” he says, and she thinks her smile is so wide it might just slide right off her face. “Do you want another drink? We could sit out here, maybe, if it’s too crowded inside.”

“As long as you’re not going to be too cold,” Elaine teases and he rolls his eyes, huffs a laugh.

“I’ll be fine.”

She digs the twenty-thousand-lira bonus her boss had folded into her hand earlier out of her pocket and hands it to him. “Surprise me.”

“I can…”

“I appreciate that you were evidently raised to be a gentleman, but I was given specific instructions to spend this on a good time. Let me treat you.”

This smile of his is going to be the death of her. He takes it, his fingers brushing hers again. She feels every molecule of contact, wonders if he’s feeling as giddy as she is. When he’s gone, she finds a seat on the wall overlooking the moonlit river and waits. There is a tiny seed of anxiety that this has to be a dream, a hallucination, that life isn’t like this for people like her, but abruptly she smothers the thought, presses it back down into the far reaches of her brain.

She doesn’t realise he’s come back for a full few minutes, only does when she looks up to find him standing a few feet away, two glasses in his hands and looking at her.

“You ok?” she asks.

“Just enjoying watching you thinking,” he says, and then before she can respond to something as momentous as that, continues, “local wine. I’m assured it’s the best in the city.”

“They all say that.”

“I know.”

Elaine smiles. “So many bests to try. It’s rather lovely when you think about it.”

“To this best,” he says, handing her a glass and clinking his own against it. “To our best.”

He sits down. Their feet are brushing, but it feels more intimate than maybe anything Elaine has ever experienced before – certainly more intimate than any of the boys back home she knows would be capable of, the posh students her housemates bring round, the local boys she knew at primary school and never quite got out of the habit of talking to.

Their conversation takes a turn for the mundane. They realise they both grew up in Oxford, though her in the east and him in the wealthy north. She learns about his time at university in Cambridge, about training at Lympstone on the Devonshire Coast, about Kuwait and Bosnia and Honduras. He seems equally fascinated by her string of jobs in cafes and shops, her mother, her friends; he doesn’t care that Verona is the only place she’s ever been outside of England, that she hasn’t been to university yet. He looks at her like she’s the most amazing woman he’s ever met and she doesn’t know what to do with it all, with the knowledge that in a few short hours this will all be over.

“Elaine!” someone screams, later, hours and hours later. “Elaaaaaine!”

They’ve circled back around to Armageddon again and Elaine looks up, irritated by the interruption. It’s Arabella, all blonde-streaked curls and warm tanned skin, stumbling across the piazza in her heels and towing Laure, the light streaking through her afro and across her high, brown-black cheekbones. They’ve lost the boys they were flirting with, and Elaine quickly and selfishly wishes they’d stayed where they were.

“Where have you been?” Arabella demands. “Who’s this?”

“Right here, and John,” Elaine says.

“John.” Arabella narrows her eyes in the determined way of the very drunk, as though she knows the word is supposed to mean something but can’t quite get what it is. “Johhhnnn.”

“I think you need some water,” Elaine says. She looks at Laure, who is listing at an alarming forty-five-degree angle to the right. “Actually, I think you both do.”

“Everyone’s inside, are you coming, come on,” Laure whines, grabbing Elaine’s hand and squeezing a little bit too hard. She stares up at John for a second and then sways into Elaine in a manner that is probably _supposed_ to be conspiratorial. “He’s _handsome,_ Lainey. Where did you _find_ him?”

“Water,” Elaine says, feeling her cheeks heat up. “Come on.”

“Come inside, it’s nearly midnight, you promised me a midnight kiss Lainey you can’t ditch me just because he’s handsome.”

“We should perhaps go in,” John says quietly behind her. She sighs, tucks her crossness at the interruption down. She is not going to be cross tonight. Not when it’s been so special. There’s no point in ruining it.

“A promise is a promise,” she agrees. “I’ll kiss you at midnight if you sober up a bit, Laure, ok?”

“Ok,” Laure giggles and flings an arm around Elaine’s neck. Arabella is still swaying to herself, so Elaine grabs her hand too. Her fingers are very cold and Elaine is unwillingly about to give John’s jacket to her, but he’s already unravelling her scarf from around his neck and putting it over Arabella’s bare shoulders. He gives her a wry smile over the top of Arabella’s head.

The four of them get back into the bar. John disappears for two seconds, coming back with two glasses of water for Elaine’s friends. She mouths a thank you at him whilst gimlet-staring both of them into drinking, which he smiles a response to, taking the glasses when they’re done. She’s still wearing his jacket. It’s too hot in here for it, really, but she doesn’t want to relinquish it, not quite yet. Arabella grabs her hand and drags her onto the dancefloor without asking any permission and Elaine sighs, goes with it. She promised she’d just go with it, whatever happened. That’s the whole point of nights like tonight. It doesn’t matter that she just wanted to spend the rest of eternity on that balustrade talking to John, to stay there so long they could become statues, to become a myth, a legend, a tourist attraction that people touch for good luck. She sees him drawn into another group conversation, but he angles himself to watch her and sends a smile her way when he catches her looking.

“It’s five minutes till we all die!” some dramatic person shouts, and they all flood, buffeted about, onto the terrace to wait for the fireworks. Elaine is squashed in between Laure and Arabella, wishes briefly that she could be next to John, that she could maybe muster the courage to kiss him for New Year. She drinks another glass of champagne, perhaps a little too quickly.

“Cinque, quattro, tre, due, uno!” they shout all together, and then Laure is mashing her mouth into Elaine’s, clumsy and tasting of beer and lipstick, and Elaine is screeching with sudden surprised laughter, thinking that if the world’s going to end tonight then this isn’t a bad way to go. Arabella kisses her next, and everyone is screaming new year greetings at each other, thrilled with their own aliveness, that death has not descended from the heavens on the stroke of midnight. Elaine is entirely sure that’s not how Y2K was going to pan out in the first place, but she’s so caught up in the current of it that she doesn’t really care.

Everyone is kissing everyone, the fireworks have all started – a whole spring day of flowers exploding against the night sky. Elaine cranes her neck up and up and up, leaning back on her elbows to look at them. What a thing. What a life she could have. What a life she _wants_ to have. The dancing starts again and she loses Laure to a bunch of women and Arabella to an embrace with a man she’s sure to regret in the morning, and finally, _finally,_ John is there next to her, like he’s been there all along.

“Happy New Year,” he says.

“Happy New Year,” she replies. Her heart is thudding, suddenly. “We’re not dead.”

“I did wonder briefly if we should have given the conspiracy theorists more credit,” John tells her and she turns to him, just an inch. “I’m going to have to go. I have an early start tomorrow.”

“Today,” she corrects.

“Today,” he repeats, with that smile. She doesn’t want him to go. She doesn’t want this night to be over. But she doesn’t want to whine and sulk and pout either. She’s good at letting things happen. She’s always been a big believer in fate.

He takes her hand, and, very slowly, lifts it to his mouth, kisses her knuckles and tucks something papery in between her fingers. Elaine doesn’t remember how to breathe. That’s it. She didn’t realise that forgetting to breathe was something that happened anywhere other than romance novels.

Finally, she manages, as nonchalant as possible despite her heart attempting to beat the land-speed record: “So, what do you think of the new millennium so far?”

John doesn’t break eye contact. “I think it’s off to a wonderful start.”

*

**_16 th January 2000_ **

_John,_

_I can’t believe I didn’t realise until I got back to Marina’s place, but I still have your jacket! I’m fully aware it might not be something you’re thinking much about right now, but I can post it back to you if you want – or if it’s easier, I can just drop it off at your parents’_ _place in Oxford or something for when you next visit them?_

_I’m back in Oxford, by the way. It feels like a burst fever dream to be back here, biking up the Cowley Road to work serving tourists every day in the coffee house. I am lucky to live somewhere so many people want to visit, and I am happy to see the dreaming spires again, to see my cousins and my old friends. I’m glad they’ve all survived the end of the world intact. It’s weird, isn’t it, how three days ago we were talking about the end of the world? I just can’t stop thinking of all the worlds that have been and gone here since I went to Verona. I catalogue them around the city. A shop has a new coat of paint. They’re doing roadworks again on the Iffley Road. The new crop of schoolboys and students who hang around in the bike lanes and get in my way. The snowdrops, early this year, in the parks. In so many small ways, nothing stays the same, does it? But even though that’s the case, it simultaneously feels like nothing ever changes around here apart from people getting older and life getting harder. It makes me quite anxious sometimes, all the hopelessness of some situations._

_However, you have to take joy where you can. I’m going to send you a handful of joyful things each letter because I think it’s good to approach the world like this, instead of just letting the bad things drag you down. Oxford in the sunshine is unbelievable, like royalty, or heaven. I love the looks on people’s faces when they see Radcliffe Square for the first time (another beginning!). I do like being back at the café again, getting inspired by people’s faces and the snippets of conversation I overhear. There was a very cute dog I got to say hello to as well. And the last thing is that I also came across the poems I’ve copied out for you_ _. I found the book in the library the other day and thought that they were very beautiful._

_Love,_

_Elaine_

_*_

**_1 st March 2000_ **

_Dear Elaine,_

_Keep the jacket until we see each other again. You can pay rent in poetry, if you like. How about that as a deal?_

_I’m sorry for the slow response. The war has been unpredictable and very busy. I’m second in command of my company (100 soldiers, thereabouts), and the work is never-ending. But please keep writing, even if I don’t reply. They’re being received, read, and looked forward to._

_Glad that Oxford remains intact, if in motion. I hear there were some worldwide computer problems, but nothing so bad as Armageddon or that book I was telling you about, Good Omens. The apocalypse there is also computer-caused. I would say they’re trying to tell us something, but I also think that people have and will always be afraid of new technology. And, as you said, dooms-daying can be inappropriately amusing in small doses._

_Speaking of Oxford, your list felt quite poetic. I need to think about the philosophy of movement and how it relates to life more. I’ll send some thoughts when I’ve had time._

_How are your family and friends? I hope the new year has found them all well and not too changed._

_Speaking of books, as well: I tried to look up Audre Lorde. Sadly, we don’t have fantastic access to books out here, and it’s, well, the whole country’s a mess. When I get back to somewhere peaceful, I’ll try and find one of her books. If you have any other recommendations, let me know. I’ll do a bulk order._

_And thank you for the joy. That’s a lovely idea. We saw a few children the other day splashing around in this enormous puddle and screaming with laughter like the funniest thing in the world was some muddy water. It made everyone smile._

_I like how clear and succinct Qabbani is in his use of language. Tell me more about the use of language in poetry? I also think his poem about words says a lot about how language and power work together. My friend, Chu, who captains a different company did literature at university before he joined up and we’ve had discussions about this before. What do you think? I want to know your thoughts…_

_*_

**_23 rd March 2000_ **

_John,_

_How dare you prioritise your vitally important, dangerous, and high wire job to make sure you write to me promptly? The very thought!_

_Of course it’s ok. Thank you for telling me though, because I was getting a little bit worried that you hadn’t wanted to keep in contact after all. I absolutely understand. I’m also trying to send a care package, but the military post office system is being very cryptic about requirements for overseas parcels so bear with me on that one. Hopefully it’ll get to you at some point in the next thousand years._

_Also, you’ve hinted at the fact that everything is pretty horrible in Kosovo at the moment. I kept up with the news whilst the bombing was going on because my old boss is a foreign-affairs journalist, so we’d always be talking about it over dinner or after the kids were in bed and I’ve tried to here, but it’s all gone a bit silent. Anyway. I just wanted to make a space for you to rant about it all, if you ever need one. I don’t mind listening, though there isn’t much I can do to make it better._

_Language and power, well that’s an interesting one. There’s so much that can be said about language and power, and the use of language in poetry. People have written entire books about it, would you believe? For me, it’s the weight of words, the feel of them. I love words that just shimmer, or have awkward angles to them, words that don’t fit neatly into boxes. I love playing with them and seeing what different meanings and feelings you can get by putting them all next to each other. Or those words that don’t translate (see attached list). And obviously, every poet is different. This is just me._

_My friends are fine – drifting in and out of my life as ever. I like to befriend interesting people, but often interesting people aren’t the most reliable, so it comes and goes. But still got the same housemates and no one has done anything particularly heinous bar the séance evening we all threw recently. The family is also fine. My favourite cousin graduated her degree, has started at Oxford University Press in a proper white-collar job. She looks so fancy in her little suits! And, other family, I think I mentioned? Did I? My mother died about eighteen months ago. It was a lurching thing, coming back to an Oxford without her in it, but I’m finding my feet, steadily. I think. Some days are harder than others. She was my best friend, especially after Da was killed. What about your family? Are they doing ok?_

_Back to language and power, please see the attached essay I wrote on the back of a magazine in my lunchbreak…_

_…anyway. My joy for the week. New coffee beans at work! Which is nice after three months of the same. And a new-new colleague called Kwame who has started sneaking me into the Bodleian with them after hours so I can read whilst they work on their essays! And they were writing an essay about basically what we were talking about, so I made them print off a copy for you too (because they’re brilliant and it’s brilliant and I think you’ll find it interesting)._

_P.S. Please find the first quarter’s rent in the enclosed envelope. I’ve never actually showed my poetry to anyone other than Mum and my cousin (who’s also a writer so it doesn’t count) so…I’m a bit nervous. I hope you like it._

_P.P.S. Your jacket is the warmest thing in my wardrobe and has already gained compliments at work. It’s doing well for itself!_

_*_

**_5 th June 2000_ **

_Elaine,_

_I was going to say don’t send a care package if you don’t want to, but your care package reached me before I could write back. Thank you, truly. The sweets your housemate made were greatly appreciated amongst the company and some of the local children. The socks are very warm for in my sleeping bag. And finally the books – thank you, Elaine, you didn’t have to do that at all! I hate to think of you parted from your books, but I liked reading your notes and thoughts all around the edges. It felt like we were together, in a way, in a café or something reading the same volume and talking about it. Perhaps that’s something we could do in the future. And as you’ve read the sentence before this one: don’t worry. I want to keep writing to you._

_Lorde is incredible, isn’t she? I can’t believe my education never touched on her, or on Maya Angelou; both their poetry is so…well. Angry. Caring. Kind. Constructive. Alive. I think alive is the best word. It captures what it’s like to be a person. For me, also, what it’s like to have experiences I never will…_

_…I’m sorry, Elaine. I don’t know how you feel about apologies as a response to bereavement. They always seem too small. Inappropriate, almost. But for what it’s worth, I am sorry. I’ve not lost a parent yet, but I’ve lost friends and colleagues out on tour, and it never gets any easier. Sometimes I just comfort myself with the thought that I live for them. I keep them with me, tucked in a pocket. I make myself remember them. I’d love to hear more about your mother if you want to talk to me about her. If you want._

_Speaking of parents… ~~how to write this~~ …I’m not quite estranged from them. I don’t like them very much. They hold certain views about the world (especially around race and class) that I haven’t shared since at least sixth form, and because of that I find it difficult to spend time with them. They are something I measure myself against in the negative – I’ve dedicated my life to being as little like them as possible, to educating myself about the system, to being as open-minded as possible. I haven’t cut ties, not yet, but I really think it’s just a matter of time. Since we’re on a depressing subject, thank you, for holding space. I’m quite good at dealing with horrible things. Whether that’s a character flaw or not, who can say, but it’s the truth. I have coping mechanisms. The worst bit, I think, is the needlessness. The dehumanisation. I hold my soldiers to extremely high standards when it comes to respecting other people – the enemy, any prisoners, civilians – but not all officers do, whichever side they’re on. I think that’s the hardest part, especially here. The Balkans are an absolute tragedy. _

_On a happier note - my joy for this letter is your poetry. Stop holding your breath and fretting, I know you are. Elaine, it’s gorgeous. I don’t know how your brain makes words do that! They’re so vivid and alive and witty and true. I love how you paint portraits of people in your life and places and moments. It’s almost as if I could be there, or looking that person in the face, or experiencing it all right alongside the narrator. Made me laugh too, several of them, surprised the hell out of a couple of my privates. A couple of questions though: first, have you thought about trying to publish them? And second: is the last one you sent about us? About Verona? It felt like it to me._

_*_

**_28 th June 2000_ **

_John,_

_Gosh I’m so glad you like them. It’s such a relief. That’s very sweet of you to say. I’ve done a couple of open-mic nights before and I pasted a few of them up at bus stops because I felt like it, but…I never really thought publishing them properly was for me? I’m a black girl from a council estate in Oxford who works in a café. Poets aren’t_ me, _even though women like Maya and Audre publish their work. But they were older when they did that. I’m only just twenty-four_. _But this year and studying with Kwame and meeting you has maybe proved to me that perhaps I do have valuable things to say to the world. So…I think the closest I’m going to commit is that I’ll think about it, because if I say I’ll do it, I know that you’ll hold me to that promise and I’m not completely certain yet._

_And I think I’d have to write and write until I had a handful I was truly comfortable with letting the world see._

_Yes. That poem is about Verona. I wrote it hungover on the plane three days after the new year, and it’s my favourite thing that I’ve ever written. I don’t know if you know how special that night was to me. I didn’t ever realise that magic was meant for people like me. I can’t believe it was six months ago; it feels simultaneously like yesterday and ancient history. I don’t know what you think._

_You’ve also touched on why poetry is so special. It is…it’s so stripped back and raw and bare and living, and it gets to the core of things quicker than a novel. Not to say that novels don’t, they just do it in a different way. And it allows you to learn so much. You’re right._

_I’m sorry that your parents aren’t great and that you don’t get on, though I will admit it was a little weight off to hear you address the issue. I had the feeling you’d be the kind of person to be angry about unjust systems and bigoted people, but I’m glad to have the confirmation. I’m also sorry that you had to grow up with that, too, though. My parents struggled and were products of their times and experiences as much as anyone, but they were the loveliest, kindest people I’d ever known. They encouraged me in everything. Mum wrote too, and we’d spent days at the kitchen table writing together. It’s one of my happiest memories of her. We’d drink tea to ration out the time between meals because we couldn’t afford to be wasteful with food and write until we forgot we were hungry. Your smile reminds me of hers, too._

_Thank you for the apology. Apologies are a little inane when it comes to death, especially as an apology implies that you the apologiser has some kind of responsibility for that death. But then again, maybe it’s become a custom in England because maybe people feel like they should take responsibility for the whys and whims of the universe. I don’t know for certain, though._

_I am also, on another note, pleased that you have coping mechanisms. And I’m sorry that humans do this to each other. I’m sorry that this is a facet of our existence that we’ll never truly be able to wipe out. I’m sorry that people are caught on the jagged edges of human cruelty and I’m sorry that others have to bear witness to that. I’m sending you strength and joy to counteract it all. I hope it helps._

_I’m glad you liked the box. I’ll send another one at some point. There’s so much you need to read._

*

**_3 rd July 2000_ **

_Quick note, no time but had to say this – your voice is valuable – so, incredibly valuable._

_Joy gratefully received. This is fucking awful. Elaine, I’m so glad to have you._

_P.S. Verona was one of the best nights of my life so far. Arctic included._

_*_

“Parry, post got here whilst you guys were out,” Chu says in the officers’ mess tent as John slides onto the bench. “Got a few letters for you.”

“Thanks, man,” John says, sliding them towards him and feeling the smile that always comes whenever he sees Elaine’s cream-coloured envelopes, her spidery, poet’s handwriting shaping out his name on the front. It’s been two years they’ve been writing to each other, circumstances depending, and he’s still, well…he’s just, she’s incredible. Time hasn’t rubbed the sheen from her; if only it’s made her shinier, more and more precious now he knows some of her rough edges and more of her story.

“You’ve been getting a lot of letters,” Davids says, leaning over in an overly solicitous manner. “Going to share with the class?”

“Hm,” John looks up at them, at these two men who’s been at his shoulders since they were fresh recruits right out of uni at Lympstone. He loves them, but not enough to let them see how soft he is about Elaine. “No. Sorry, chaps.”

“Girlfriend?” Chu asks, turning to Davids.

“It’s got to be a girlfriend,” Davids says, as though John isn’t there at all. John allows himself to be amused by their antics. They’ve been narrating him like this the entire time he’s known them, seem to find it endlessly entertaining even now they’re all company commanders and should be well beyond it. “That looks like a woman’s writing. And no-one else would write this poor dear sod letters.”

“Yeah, but when has Parry been interested in anyone?” asks Chu, ever skeptical.

Davids turns to him. “Are you going to put us out of our misery?”

“We will keep hounding you,” Chu says.

John smiles at them both. “No.”

“Cold, man, cold.”

“It’s always the nice ones you’ve got to watch out for.”

John looks back down at the three letters Elaine has sent since the post came last, rubs his thumb over the edge of one. She’s special. He doesn’t want to share her just yet.

*

_…I need to ask you a question. I know it’s been what, three years, don’t judge me for being slow off the mark. And don’t take it the wrong way. Am I your muse? Do I need to source a white nightgown and red wig from somewhere and do my best Jane Burden impression?_

_But seriously, I can’t help noticing that your poems are about us. And about me, quite a lot. I’m not upset at all. I’m just curious. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine – but I want to know._

_Things have settled down a little bit now, as you can tell from the fact I’m writing to you again. The invasion is going…well. As well as any war goes, I suppose. I’ve been doing this job for a decade now, being in the Marines, and sometimes I’m so sure I’m in the right place and other times I’m just…war is horrible. Sometimes necessary, I would argue, but the necessariness of it all doesn’t balance out the horror. All the lives being lost and wrecked and ended. You called it ‘jagged edges’ once and that keeps coming back to me as this new war drags on. The thing about jagged edges is that they’re always cutting. War and violence only ever escalate._

_Anyway. The whole morality of war in general is above my rank and my paygrade. I just do as I’m told and try not to cause too much damage along the way. I don’t know. My head is a bit caught up over it at the moment, as you might be able to tell._

_I might come back to England on my next leave. I don’t know. I’ve got the kids in Glasgow and the survival outreach programme that’s starting up in the autumn. And of course you know the whole situation with my parents. I’ll have to pay them a courtesy visit, but that may be in Edinburgh with my aunt. Bear with me. I want to come to England to see you. A lot. But we’ve been writing for so long now Elaine that I’m scared I won’t live up to whoever I am in your head. Does that make sense? Or am I being an idiot and should just get on the first flight to Heathrow?_

*

_Much as you would make a beautiful pre-Raphaelite painting, you are not that kind of muse. How do I explain it, John? I don’t really know, so bear with me and I’ll do my best. You…you’ve lived the kind of adventurous, all-over-the-place life that I never realised I wanted until Verona, until I met you. And so writing about us and about you is a way to fulfil that whilst I’m stuck in this bloody city in cafés, just about making rent each month. ~~An update on that, later, though.~~ Secondly, I think your attitude to life and the way you tackle and approach it is one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen. You just do things – like climb mountains and jump out of planes and wild swim and trek without a second thought. You walked to the magnetic north pole! You know how to navigate via the stars! And you love physics and cosmology so much and that’s so difficult to understand but you just try and do it and work hard at it and it clicks for you. You read everything you can get your hands on. You teach disadvantaged kids (like me, fifteen years ago) survival skills, which must be the most empowering thing ever for them to learn. You don’t let the world change around you, you change the world. _

_Am I making sense? I don’t know. You fascinate me. That’s why I’m still writing poems about you three years later, even though I haven’t seen your face since the new millennium._

_No, I get it. I do. I want to see you perhaps more than anything and wander around Oxford at night with cups of tea and sneak into University Parks and stargaze (as much as we can). But we know stories of each other, stories we’ve told each other about ourselves. You don’t know all sorts of gross and unappealing things about me. You might take one look at me and wonder what on earth you’ve been doing for the last three years and…well. I’m not going to lie. I don’t think that’s an eventuality I’d be able to come back from._

_So, that being said, I can wait until the stars align for us. You’re busy, I’m busy. I’m now working at a bookshop on Broad Street! Which is quite exciting and better-paid (just) which I’m happy about, and also…I’m getting something published! Someone agreed to represent me! I’m still figuring it all out, but I’m very proud of myself._

_It’s alright to be caught up and unsure. You know that, right?_ _You are one of the surest people I know (and I’m sure surety has kept you safe and served you well and I’m very glad of it) but unsurety in the big questions is ok. It’s good, actually. Some questions there are no right answers to. Do I agree with the war you’re fighting right now? No. Not really, I don’t think. Do I agree with interventions during WWII? Hell yes! Do I have a coherent opinion on any war in general? Absolutely not. And I think all we can do is talk about it and do the best we can to make the right decision – and the kind decision – in the moment and prevent atrocities as much as possible. It sounds like that’s what you’re doing. And it’ll be over soon. Just hold onto that._

_*_

_Elaine, I’m going to take you on adventures._ _I’ll take you to the most beautiful places in the world. You can’t_ give _places like that – they belong to themselves, of course – but we can share in them just a little, and I’ll be able to see your face when we summit Kilimanjaro or sail around the Cape or dive the blue hole off Malta. Look at me; now that I’ve committed it to paper, it turns out that I want this more than anything in the world. I’ll find a way to make it happen._ _You deserve it, so much._

_…_

_Sorry, I’m finishing this a week later. Sorry. It’s been a long week. One of my privates died over the weekend. He was nineteen, just a kid. IED. Just like that. At least it was fast. Got two more in hospital; they should live. Fuck, it’s just so awful – thank you, for your writing, for your faith, for telling me it’s ok not to know. I needed to hear that because I don’t know. I’m upset and angry about this kid’s death, and the letter I’ve written to his mother and father doesn’t seem like enough. But how many Iraqi kids are we sending home in pieces to their families? It impacts them too, just as much as us, and I’m…_

_I don’t know if words are even going to work for me. Maybe I’ll be able to write about it later. I don’t know. It all feels a little unspeakable right now._

_P.S. You star. I knew you could do it. _

_*_

_It’s alright for things to be unspeakable_ _as well. Poets know better than maybe anyone that some things can’t be conveyed through words, and some things can’t ever be conveyed to another person at all. I hope you know that and know that it’s alright. And if you ever can or do want to speak them, I am here._

_I would love that. So much. I might have started making a list. I don’t know if you can do that too. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, an explorer and a poet running away together into the great blue beyond?_

_*_

**Verona**

**(a collection)**

Elaine Iduwo

 _To the man who is my muse, my correspondent, and possibly the love of my life (this last tbc)_ _– thank you for believing in me._

*

Outside the bookshop, it is getting dark – both slowly and all at once, the way it does in winter here. Elaine is adjusting her jacket and chatting to her manager and the author they’d had in for the launch today, a Bangladeshi woman whose first book has just come out. This is the best part of working here, easily; all the opportunities to talk to other writers, to introduce people to their next favourite story, to be around books all day every day. She’s steady. Content. John hasn’t written in a while, but she knows his unit has deployed to Northern Ireland recently, and there’s always a quiet period when he’s settling in.

“Are you writers?” the author is asking.

“Elaine is,” Elaine’s manager says promptly, grinning at her. They’d put her book in pride of place on the front of the poetry shelves, and her manager has been hustling them to every person who walks in the front door. “Elaine’s a poet.”

“A poet?” the author asks. “What kind?”

“All kinds, really,” Elaine shrugs. “I just go where the words take me.”

“Isn’t it the best thing?” the author says. Elaine’s manager has been towed away to start the clear-up, people are dribbling off in the direction of the pub across the road. She and the author slip into conversation as easily as anything, and she’s really getting into the dissection of craft when the author’s eyes flit over Elaine’s shoulder, catch on something behind her. Elaine turns. Her heart stops dead in her chest.

“I’m sorry for interrupting,” John says. He’s in civvies, he’s more tanned than he was before, his eyes are brighter, and his hair is shorter and he’s looking at Elaine like she’s every single star in the universe gathered carefully into one.

“What are you _doing_ here?” Elaine manages, when she remembers how words work.

“It’s absolutely no problem at all,” the author says, sounding far too amused. “Thank you again for organising such a lovely event, Elaine. I’ll be sure to have a look for your work.”

“Yes, thank you,” Elaine says on auto-pilot. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from John if she tried. Then, to him, “you haven’t answered my question.”

“Buying a book, since you’re open late,” John says, lifting his bag about an inch higher. “I just got back this afternoon, and I…not relevant. I recognised the jacket.”

Elaine glances down at it – worn out around the elbows, the same red corduroy as four years ago. She starts pulling it off. “Oh. You can have-”

“You’ve paid enough poetry to own the damn thing ten times over,” John interrupts. “A hundred times.”

She stops fiddling, feels heat flush to her face, looks back up at him. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she says.

“I can’t believe _you’re_ here,” he says, fervent, and then smiles at her and she’s known she was a goner since the very first time he did that, but now this is proof, this is him standing four feet away from her and smiling at her and she doesn’t know what to do or say or…

“You’re not going to, I don’t know, evaporate or something?”

He laughs. “No. I’m not. I can prove it to you if you like?”

“Ok,” Elaine says, and he closes the distance between them and wraps his arms around her, pressing his face into her shoulder. She slides a hand into the hair at the nape of his neck and breathes him in, after all this time, all these years, he’s here. He’s in her arms, his breath whistling against the line where her jumper meets her skin. She didn’t think that this dream of hers would ever really come true.

“Um,” a voice says, and Elaine looks over to see her manager standing on the staircase, an empty tray for all the glasses tucked under her arm. John carefully disentangles himself and steps away; Elaine makes a little involuntary movement, as though now her body knows what it’s like to be pressed up against his, it doesn’t want to spend another second apart. Like that was the last straw.

“Sorry,” he says. “Are you free?”

Elaine digs her fingernails into her palms, tries to calm her racing heartbeat. Her cheeks are burning. “After I’ve helped clean up, yes.”

“No,” her manager says. “She’s free. If you’re who I think you are, sir, then she is most definitely free. Scram, Elaine.”

“Ok,” Elaine squeaks, grabbing her scarf from where she’d draped it. “See you Monday.”

John holds the door open for her and they make it halfway to Radcliffe Square before Elaine manages, “Sorry about her.”

She can tell he’s looking at her in the dark, doesn’t want to meet his eyes. She can’t believe her manager brought up that dedication, that ridiculous heart-on-sleeve thing she’d written at the very last minute and sent off before she could change her mind, before she could even _okay_ it with him. She can’t believe she’s here with him after all those years of maybes and not-nows. The world is an unexpected place, she knows that, but there’s a difference between knowing something and being confronted with it without _any damn warning at all._

“Why are you apologising?” he asks, and she sighs through her teeth, not sure if it’s relief or humiliation. Maybe he hasn’t read the book yet. Maybe he hasn’t had time to find a bookstore. She hadn’t sent him a copy.

In the dark, his hand has found hers, sure, as always. Their fingers interlace as though they’ve been doing this all their lives. They’ve fallen into step together as though they’ve walked all of history side-by-side.

“I don’t know. I did a thing. A rash thing. She thinks it’s very romantic, and…”

“Love,” John says, very quietly, quiet enough that Elaine isn’t sure if she’s misheard him. “If you’re talking about the dedication on your book, then I know.” He pauses. “It is about me, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she says, and he squeezes her hand, just once.

“I just had to check.”

“I am not corresponding with any other intelligent, kind, handsome Royal Marine majors, no,” she says, and glances sideways in time to see his mouth tick up.

“Lieutenant Colonel,” is all he says.

“What? John!”

They pass New College in the dark, all leering brick and tall shadows, round the bend into Queen’s Lane. She’s done a bit of research but she doesn’t know what Lieutenant Colonel means for him, or why he’s here, or what it means for them, for the fact he’s holding her hand and walking her home on a chilly January night.

“Yes, I know. But I’m…well. The other guy isn’t ready to retire quite yet, so they’ve funded a PhD for me. Arctic stuff. Physics. I’ll be here for a few years. I wanted to tell you in person.”

Elaine stops dead and John stops too, turns to face her. In the dark, his face is expressionless.

“You’re going to be here?”

“Yes.”

“In Oxford?”

“Yes.”

“For…”

“At least three years.”

“Not on deployment?”

“Not on deployment.” He catches her free hand too, tugs her a little bit closer. “So, I…your dedication, I…was wondering if I could get some confirmation. Because I think you’re the love of my life, Elaine, I’ve never-”

She leans up and kisses him before he has the chance to finish his sentence. In an instant he’s pulled her close, is kissing her back, letting her walk him backwards so they’re pressed up against the wall of Queen’s College, and all Elaine can think about is four years, four years of correspondence and love and _knowledge_ and finally she gets to kiss him, to hold him close, to be in the same place as him and build a life together and…

He pulls away just a little. One of her braids is twisted around his finger, and his hand is rough against her cheek.

“I was trying to declare my love for you in a suitably poetic fashion,” he complains, breathless and grinning.

Elaine leans in again, nose to nose, breathing the same air. “And I’m trying to kiss you senseless, if you’d be so kind as to save the poetry for later.”

He laughs against her mouth and Elaine knows, right then, that this is going to be her forever.

**Author's Note:**

> The Audre Lorde poem Elaine quotes from is called "Outlines." The poems she sends to him in her first letter are by Nizar Qabbani - "Clarification to my Poetry Readers" and "I Conquer The World With Words."  
> Y2K is when everyone thought the world would end because of a computer bug.  
> Jane Burden was the muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and is the red-headed woman you see in a tonne of Pre-Raphaelite artwork. She was born in Oxford! And finally, in my head, the author in the last scene is Monica Ali who wrote Brick Lane.
> 
> Come and scream at me on Tumblr:@if-fortunate!


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